Welcome cats and kittens to the fourth annual Cewsh Reviews End of Year Awards. As we ring in the 5th (!) year of Cewsh Reviews, it only makes sense to take a look back on the things that defined the past year. There were incredible matches that took your breath away, shocking moments that tested the narrative truth of jaws actually hitting floors, and things that were so goddamn awful that my I've been using the rag they gave me to power my coffee maker for months now. So despite the fact that we're almost a month into the new year, (I was in a coma after knife fighting a wildebeest) tonight we'll celebrate the best and worst of it all, and put 2012 to rest in the most dignified way possible.

NOT HELPFUL, TNA.

Now, if you've read our end of year awards before, you already know that we don't do things like any old wrestling blog off the street. Oh no, we use math. And through the use of this ancient and mysterious method, we'll see just who was REALLY the best, worst and Tanookiest of them all. How can math help us after all the times it betrayed us in school? Well...

Each match that we reviewed this year was compiled and averaged out to determine the score for each wrestler's full year. We only included wrestlers who had at least 3 matches this year that we reviewed, and for the purposes of these awards we used my (meaning Cewsh's) ratings. For reference, anyone receiving a cumulative average score of 60 - 69 is considered to have passed in terms of having been part of enjoyable matches in the past year. An average of 70 - 79 means that your matches were consistently good, if not particularly special, and a score of 80 - 89 means you had really good to great matches so consistently that your entire year qualifies for a Download Seal of Approval. Should anyone crest the diamond mountains of the 90 - 100 range, it should probably go without saying that they are some kind of goddamn sorcerer. And for the record, these awards are being given out prior to our review of WWE TLC 2012, but those match ratings have been counted as well.

Alright, everybody good? Nobody fall asleep during that? Well then let's let down the curtains, fire up the band, and get this jungle party started!

Cewsh: You can read our review in all of its lengthy majesty here. The Undertaker has won this award every time that we have handed it out. Not a bad run for a Deadman.

Male Wrestler of the Year (Minimum of 3 Matches Reviewed):

Bobby Roode (TNA) - 82 out of 100

Cewsh: Nobody's more surprised to see The It Factor win this year than me. But, perhaps thanks to us only reviewing the 5 biggest TNA shows of the year, Roode stood tall this year. He had amazing matches with James Storm and Austin Aries and was the glue that held the promotion together right up until it fell all fell apart. So this year he stands at the top of the heap. But TNA being TNA, don't expect him to be given a chance to repeat.

Female Wrestler of the Year (Minimum of 3 Matches Reviewed):

Gail Kim (TNA) - 69.7 out of 100

Cewsh: A clean sweep for TNA this year, though the 69.7 score for the winner is more of an indictment of mainstream women's wrestling in 2012 than anything else. So congrats to Gail for being the best of a rotten bunch during her refreshing run on top of the Knockouts Division.

Favorite Male Wrestler of the Year:

Naomichi Marufuji (NOAH)

Cewsh: He's basically become what Jushin Liger was in his early 30s. If you don't like him, then your brain is wired wrong and you should punch it.

Favorite Female Wrestler of the Year:

Ayako Hamada (SHIMMER)

Cewsh: I have never not loved a Hamada match. NEVER. And she's wrestled Eric Young before, so you know that I mean it.

Best Team of The Year:

The World Tag Team Champions Of The World (TNA)

Cewsh: With the new focus on tag wrestling going on throughout the wrestling world, I figured it was finally time to give credit to the best and worst tag teams in the land. Pretty much none of them have a PPV sample size that qualifies them to be statistically graded as teams, so instead I'll just assign the winner and, narrowly edging out the Primetime Players, Team Hell No and The Queens of Winning, Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian take this one. It's one thing for a team to be great with the support of other great teams and with great writing supporting them. It's quite another to be great when you're wrestling Chavo Guerrero every night and have to make the Claire Lynch angle work. These two earned it.

Show of the Year:

WWE Summerslam 2012 - 77.7 out of 100

Cewsh: We laughed, we cried, we enjoyed a show where every match was better than expected. And we made fun of a Slim Jim commercial for like 600 words. Because that's how we roll.

Best Mic Skills of the Year:

CM Punk (WWE)

Cewsh: In four years, Punk has won this award...four times. Nobody else was even a serious contender this year.

Feud of the Year:

Kazuchika Okada vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi (NJPW)

Cewsh: Now I know there's a heavy contingent of you guys whose eyes glaze over whenever Japanese wrestling comes up, but stay with me here, because this feud is perhaps the most baffling winner this award will ever have.

Late last year, Okada was pretty much considered to be one of the most disappointing prospects in New Japan history. He had all the tools to be a great performer, and he had done his tours of the world as each young Japanese wrestler is supposed to, (in this case TNA stuck him in a "Green Hornet's sidekick" gimmick and forgot he existed,) but when he came back he was just incredibly bad. They gave him a low profile match at Wrestle Kingdom last year and he stunk the place out. So he obviously found some kind of genie lamp somewhere, because immediately afterwards he showed up bleached blond and FUCKING AMAZING. In no time whatsoever he shocked the wrestling world by dethroning Hiroshi Tanahashi and holding the title against all comers.

In many ways he was the polar opposite of the heroic and lovable man that he beat, as Okada cultivated a character that coasted by on his incredible athletic gifts and couldn't be bothered to care about what anyone else said or did. To say he became a sensation is an incredible understatement, as in one year this feud took him from a complete failure to the top heel in all of Japan, drawing huge interest from crowds by never talking,worshiping the swag lifestyle and pissing everyone off. The incredible feud between the purest babyface in professional wrestling and it's most hateable heel culminated on January 4th at NJPW's biggest show of the year, Wrestle Kingdom. And yeah, you can expect that review later on.

Best Gimmick of the Year:

Kazuchika Okada - Rebel Without A Fuck

Cewsh: He's basically every spoiled athlete that you've ever hated because they were too annoying to like and too good to ignore. *insert regional sports bias here*

Most Surprising Wrestler of the Year:

Ryback (WWE) - 76.3 out of 100

Cewsh: What started as a series of the most enjoyable squash matches in recent memory, culminated in main event matches that felt fresher than any had in years. Seeing as how last year he was Skip Sheffield, it's a pretty decent step up.

Rookie of the Year:

Zema Ion (TNA) - 73.5 out of 100

Cewsh: Unlike the Observer, which basically only gives this to people fresh out of wrestling school, I give this award to the wrestler with the highest AMG (Average Match Grade) who got their first opportunity in a significant promotion this year, (think Chikara or higher.) And this year, we're wildly proud to give the award to Zema Ion. We've beaten you over the head with the fact that we called his meteoric rise to stardom way back in 2008, and we're going to go right on doing that, because we were right and awesome and suck it.

Cewsh: You can read our review of this match here. Though if you've seen the match, that picture should be enough.

Worst Male Wrestler of the Year:

Crimson (TNA) - 52.3 out of 100

Cewsh: 2012's rookie of the year experienced an insane reversal of fortune this year, as Matt Morgan essentially killed his career in one feud. Sorry Crimson. We're rooting for you!

Worst Female Wrestler of the Year:

Eve Torres (WWE) - 64.2 out of 100

Cewsh: Unfortunately for Eve, a late year run of good matches wasn't enough to save her from the bottom of this list. Though only being 5 points behind the best women's wrestler says kind of a lot about mainstream women's wrestling at present.

Least Favorite Male Wrestler of the Year:

Jeff Hardy (TNA)

Cewsh: This year cemented it. I will never willingly watch another Jeff Hardy match. And looking at the matches he had this year, I won't be missing anything.

Least Favorite Female Wrestler of the Year:

Layla (WWE)

Cewsh: She tries her best, she really does. But in the past year, whether through WWE's designs or her own, everything that made Layla even moderately lovable has been stripped away bit by bit. Now she's just a weak pile of try hardy mush clogging up an already mushy division.

Worst Team of the Year:

Chavo Guerrero and Hernandez (TNA)

Cewsh: Naturally our choice for worst team beat our choice for best team at Bound For Glory and still hold the titles. The best thing about TNA is that they never lack for things to complain about.

Worst Show of the Year:

TNA Lockdown 2012 - 59.13 out of 100

Cewsh: It sucked.

Worst Mic Skills of the Year:

Seth Rollins (WWE)

Cewsh: I don't see how this requires an explanation. Even Ambrose is mad at him.

Worst Feud of the Year:

Jeff Hardy vs. Austin Aries (TNA)

Cewsh: I don't mean to pick on TNA, but this was basically a three horse race and all of the horses were from the TNA stable. Hardy/Aries narrowly edged out AJ Styles/Claire Lynch/Christopher Daniels and the entire Aces and Eights mess to get the top spot here, but all of them deserved attention in what has been the worst second half to a year from any wrestling company since WCW closed. Hardy and Aries was the cherry on the top, as TNA forced their top babyface star to turn heel so that they could cram a Jeff Hardy "redemption" story down our throats no matter how hard the crowds protested. When it comes to bad feuds, this one wasn't just unpleasant, it was a mega stink bomb that the rest of the company is still reeling from.

Worst Gimmick of the Year:

Zack Ryder - It's Still 2011, Right?

Cewsh: Come on, bro.

Most Disappointing Wrestler of the Year:

Rob Van Dam (TNA) - 66.8 out of 100

Cewsh: A 66.8, Rob! A fucking 66.8! There are people on this list who could have walked to the ring, slapped the ref with their dick for 10 minutes and then told me that Rhino is the greatest wrestler of all time, and they'd STILL have wound up with a better year wide average than you.

Veteran Most in Need of (Permanent) Retirement:

Mick Foley (WWE)

Cewsh: Please, just stop. You're bumming us out.

The Tanooki:

Best Gifs of the Year:

3rd Place. Kofi Kingston Walks On His Hands To Stay In The Royal Rumble. (WWE Royal Rumble 2012)

Cewsh: The biggest question is whether or not the information they found here actually helped. I like to think that it did.

Moment of the Year:

Austin Aries Wins The TNA World Heavyweight Championship

Alright, that'll do it for us and for 2012, boys and girls. We hope you enjoyed the year and our awards, and now both can be filed under "Irrelevant" until nostalgia makes them cool again ten years from now. So let's look on towards the bright lights and brighter future of 2013, and bask in the warm glow of a year that hasn't had time to suck yet.

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